Strangely enough, the confusion reminded me of Tobias captivating story.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13745/the-hairpin-by-tobias/p1 — Amity

I loved that.

And it made me wonder as to the Mum. She might have been like her daughter but she was brainwashed and wasn't in a position to leave her husband.
Who may well have been the man in Part 1...
Overthinking :chin: — Amity

Overthinking maybe, but interesting to consider.

In the case of my mom, there was fear related to bipolar disorder in her family, and she has told me that she is afraid she would go crazy without her religious beliefs. That's only one among many factors, but I understand it really is a deep seated fear for her, and knowing that in particular, I'm not much inclined to challenge her views.

The second, a loving mother showing religious concern for her daughter's soul. And losing control of the situation. — Amity

Ah, I see now that I read the second part as being between a mother and son, simply because it was easy for me to relate to it that way even though, on rereading' I couldn't find anything that makes clear the sex of the child.

Yes, it is excellent as two halves of a whole. — Vera Mont

Glad to see that you see it that way as well.

Can't you just see/hear it ? The male narcissistic bully pushing it to the limits and then dismissing her opinion/arguments as emotional! — Amity

I've been leaning towards interpreting both parts as conversations between a narcissistic parent and a child. The first part a grandiose narcissist father and his daughter. The second part a covert/vulnerable narcissist mother and her son.

Of course I might be projecting a sort of 'symmetry' that doesn't belong.

Makes me think maybe Darwin was right. — T Clark

Yeah, that clearly came from something about me that was built in deep! It makes a lot of sense, when you think about the time it takes human children to be able to fend for themselves.

I like Erich Fromm's theory of love in The Art of Loving because he casts it as an art that one can learn. — Moliere

:up:

It came to me as a force of nature — T Clark

Yeah. Before my first child was born, I knew that I would love her, but I didn't come close to anticipating how intense the emotional reaction would be when I first saw her.

We still live with the reasoning that some people are less than human. — Athena

I don't see that in most cases as a matter of reasoning so much as a matter of tribalistic instinct. I think we are naturally biased towards see US as human and THEM as less so. It takes reasoning to get beyond tribalistic thinking.

Your mother knows the earth’s a plane.

:lol:

I can relate to that one. A couple of days ago my mom told me she would be praying for me. If she knew about this guy wonderer on the internet, she would probably consider him the antichrist. :wink:

A synopsis would be preferable. — Wayfarer

Ok.

Causality in brains is very complex, with all sorts of feedback loops, and if you are thinking about it in terms of a top down vs bottom up dichotomy you aren't thinking about it very seriously.

I may well be wrong. The last thing I read by him was an interview with Dennett in which he insisted that first-person subject experience is real - not an illusion. — Ludwig V

I might disagree with Dennett similarly. I consider Dennett's views a mixed bag. Some good stuff as well as bad stuff.

Is there any chance you can give any guidance on that? You must know it fairly well to have recommend it multiple times as having found a solution. I find it very difficult. Likely my lack of education in most areas ever discussed here. But maybe you can give me some kind of summary? Or handholds to look for along the way? Anything to keep my head above water. — Patterner

Yeah, I had a 35 year head start in thinking about such things with a background in electrical engineering. I can't really imagine what it must be like to try to understand what Tse is saying without that background. I understand many won't find it an easy read.

An analogy to what Tse refers to as "criterial causation", that occurred to me before Tse's book came out, is that of locks and keys. Different locks have different criteria for what will be effective as a key that opens them.

So if you can mentally translate between locks and keys, and neural networks having different criterai for inputs/keys that will open the lock (activate a neural network output having intentionality) maybe that could help?

See The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation by Peter Tse.

Physicalism says it must be bottom-up... — Wayfarer

Not really.

We can't do that any more, though some people (Nagel, Searle) seem to think that's an option. — Ludwig V

I haven't looked into much by Searle, aside from The Chinese Room, but my impression is that Searle isn't so resistant to physicalism per se, but to a naive computationalist physicalism which he is well justified in resisting. [FWIW, some writer on Wikipedia seems to agree saying, "Searle says simply that both are true: consciousness is a real subjective experience, caused by the physical processes of the brain. (A view which he suggests might be called biological naturalism.)]

Words help poets “say the unsayable”:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/between-cultures/202303/saying-the-unsayable-the-psychology-of-poetry — Amity

Nice find!

The sentence, "Poetry can stir the memory of words that reside in our bodies in different ways." took me back to this, which I have been thinking about off and on:

It is so interesting and mysterious, the effect that poetic elements seem to have on us.
— wonderer1

I guess some might ask the question: "what are 'poetic elements?'' How do they show in expression? — Amity

By poetic elements, I had in mind things like rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, etc. My speculation is that whether we consciously recognize such poetic elements, our subconscious is excited by patterns in detecting such elements, and that can literally result in an altered state of mind in which we can see things from a different perspective.

My own worry is the damage to humanity resulting from censorship. Are you capable of caring about that? — NOS4A2

Sure.

But you are being disingenuous.

Much more likely seems an egocentric fear on your part of you being 'censored' in the sense of being banned for low post quality, though of course that wouldn't actually be censorship. I suppose it is likely that your victim mentality would make it censorship in your mind.

It seems to me to be an odd mix of individualism and universalism. An overestimation of the reliability of intuition. — Fooloso4

:up:

No, it was the question about why you're doing this. You haven't stopped writing about me yet, telling someone you have never met that they lack empathy and are psychopathic. I'm just curious as to why. — NOS4A2

Because I think there is something more useful to consider than the thread's title question, "Why should we worry about misinformation?"

Regardless of any matter of "should" there is the simple matter that some people do care about the damage to humanity that results from the propagation of disinformation and misinformation, and some people don't. To justify that all people should care, it would seem important that all people could care. So the topic of whether some people can't care is relevant, and that brings up psychopathy and whether you are capable of caring about the damage to humanity resulting from misinformation.

On the whole, though, it seems that others' are more inclined to pick apart my beliefs than I am, so the idea of an individual overcoming their biases isn't even necessary because the individual doesn't do that alone. — Moliere

:up:

Which seems to bring us back to psychology. :wink:

It was just a question. — NOS4A2

It was a question which demonstrated your lack of empathy towards abused women. So it seems appropriate to consider the extent to which your perspective is a result of Psychopathy:

Psychopathy, or psychopathic personality,[1] is a personality construct[2][3] characterized by impaired empathy and remorse, in combination with traits of boldness, disinhibition, and egocentrism. These traits are often masked by superficial charm and immunity to stress[4], which create an outward appearance of apparent normalcy.

What springs to mind is that they are two different articulations of the human all too human need to explain — Janus

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

I don't believe we are aware of all the information that enters our mind. If that is the case what the subconscious processes may indeed inform us - in what seems to be an act of free will. — jgill

Very good point.

We might say that we go with our intuitions in such cases.

Again, the goal will determine the level of accuracy (information) that is needed to accomplish the goal. — Harry Hindu

As much as the marketing department where I work might wish that were so, that isn't how things work as far as I can tell. There seem to be hard limits to what can be done in a great many ways regardless of goals.

You might be surprised at the extent to which practical matters bump into quantum limitations in today's world.
— wonderer1
Examples? — Harry Hindu

There are all sorts of metrological limits, in addition to the ones which affect measurement of voltage.

Modern logic ICs are running up against quantum limits which pose problems for shrinking transistor size.

Then to look at things from a different angle, you can buy a quantum random number generator to plug into your computer.

:up:

Could it be that the biggest problem for indirect realists, is being called indirect realists? — Mww

Might it be an even bigger problem, to label oneself with a philosophical label at all? To me it kind of suggests a closedness to different ways of looking at things.

(Not to say I won't make use of philosophical labels, as succinct ways of attempting to communicate a crude sense of what my perspective is.)

:up:

Moving on to Persian Poetry and Philosophy. — Amity

The analysis of that poem reminded of something by another middleasterner whose poetry I've turned to a lot.

And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil.
And he answered:
Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.

You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.

You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, "Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance."
For the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.

You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.

You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.

But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, "Wherefore are you slow and halting?"
For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?" nor the houseless, "What has befallen your house?"

From The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran

I understand that. I'm asking literally how does it exist. I'm referring to the HPoC. Always looking for how such things can exist in a physically deterministic reality. — Patterner

Ok, let's give neuroscience another couple hundred years, and maybe we'll find a better answer.

Correct. We don't know about the exact condition of neural activity of our brain but we know that it is deterministic. There is however a problem in the deterministic worldview so-called doubt. Options are real in the case we have doubts and a deterministic entity cannot deal with a situation when there are doubts. — MoK

Even if we ignore quantum indeterminacy... As you say, we don't know what is going on in our own brains in any detailed way, so how can you rule out subconscious bias as being what amounts to a coin flip in your head?

Also, I don't recall you acknowledging the the sort of indeterminacy that can result from system complexity. IIRC you have a physics background, so perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to consider the relevance of the three body problem to the complex molecular environment of a brain.

I certainly can't explain details of what happened in evolution to result in our propensity to feel guilt. I can only point out that we evolved as a social species, and it is reasonable to think that a capacity for feeling guilt is an aspect of what maintains our ability to function as a social species.

I agree. I'm not sure how guilt even exists in such a scenario. — Patterner

Evolved social instincts, conducive to success as a member of a social group.

My guess at the answer to the question is an evolved cheater detection module.

Attempted gaslighting...it is coming more and more evident that you're feeling like an abused girlfriend. Am I getting close? — NOS4A2

Hmm. Have you had many girlfriends who felt abused by you?

But no. Care to try again?

The artist, those of us who look at it, and posterity are harmed by your actions, which amount to vandalism. It's not up to you to deface someone's work. Imagine the deepfake show "Sassy Justice", from the creators of Southpark, with your ugly watermark on it. — NOS4A2

This is attempted gaslighting.

We can add to that the fact that you see yourself as being in a community of one and show no signs of having empathy for others.

Are you ready to take your best guess yet?

Of course, but there has been an unhealthy trend toward treating expert opinion as no more credible than the opinion of a blogger on the internet- especially among Republicans. — Relativist

I wish I could say it is a rare occurence among 'philosophers'.

Yet the gadget works 99% of the time, and when it doesn't we find out the problem and issue a recall or release an updated product. — Harry Hindu

Well, whether the product "works" can be a matter of degree as well. Suppose the gadget is a voltmeter. Whether it works to measure voltage with the accuracy and precision desired can be an important question, and at some level the accuracy can only be a guess because for practical reasons what a volt is, is going to be defined by some metrological body (in the US NIST) which will only provide a limited level of uncertainty. Furthermore, the uncertainty provided by leading national metrology institutes is very much a function of the NMI's ability to account for quantum factors.

The macro world and quantum world have not been sufficiently merged into a consistent whole. — Harry Hindu

You might be surprised at the extent to which practical matters bump into quantum limitations in today's world.

You speak as if you are getting at things as they truly are, or are you saying your statement is only true to a degree? — Harry Hindu

Suppose I design some complicated electronic gadget, and sell it to someone who has a use for what the gadget does. Most commonly the purchaser of the gadget doesn't know the gadget to anything like the degree that I do.

But then my knowledge of the gadget is far from complete, because to make the gadget I bought subgadgets to build the gadget out of, and I don't know everything that the subgadget designer knows about the subgadget. Furthermore, as we descend the gadget/subgadget/... hierarchy we are going to run into the uncertainty principle.

How do we know that we have incomplete knowledge if we didn't already know what was missing? — Harry Hindu

Because the knowledge people have about things (including other people) is not a black and white matter, but a matter of degrees.

If one knows the exact initial condition of the coin when it is tossed and the situation of the environment, such as wind, then one can know the outcome of tossing the coin. — MoK

Which brings us back to the role of ignorance in attributing things to free will.

We don't know anything remotely approaching the exact initial conditions of our brains and all the environmental factors which play a determing role in what happens in our brains. Furthermore, there is lots of good evidence for the powerful role of subconscious processes emerging in our conscious thought.

How is a "mind" a better explanation than subconscious processes?